Following last week’s bearish movements, the last three sessions gains bring us back to where we were at the start of August. Despite what some may have thought was a positive meeting with Russia/U.S. and then U.S, Ukraine and EU leaders the sentiment coming from Moscow since has caused many to think that a peace deal is some time away.
Russia’s RIA reports that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stated that no meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy is planned, ‘but Putin is ready to meet him when a summit agenda is ready. He claims that “Russia has agreed to be flexible on a number of points raised by Trump in Alaska.” Lavrov said that Zelenskyy, when presented with several principles that Russia claims are necessary for a peace, said “no to everything”. The comments would appear to continue the Kremlin’s strategy of appearing to be open to direct talks with Ukraine, called for by US President Donald Trump, while obfuscating around the actual details of when a meeting could take place.
The White House have a scheduled Oval Office address from the President today at 12 noon (5pm UK). It is widely speculated this may be related to the Russia-Ukraine topic, as it has dominated the world’s attention for the past week and it is expected that further face to face meetings are due to take place imminently.
In other news a Ukrainian national was arrested in Italy in relation to the Nord Stream AG attacks in late 2022. The suspect, identified only as Serhii K. under German privacy laws, was part of a group of people who planted devices on the pipelines near the German island of Bornholm, a statement from the prosecutor’s office said. He and his accomplices had set off from Rostock on Germany’s north-eastern coast in a sailing yacht to carry out the attack, it said, adding that the vessel had been rented from a German company with the help of forged identity documents via middlemen. It has long been suspected this act of sabotage was instigated in an attempt to limit the sale of Russian gas towards Europe with plenty of finger pointing in all directions as to who was involved.
Closer to home the market is turning its attention to the upcoming heavy maintenance in Norway beginning August 27. The main risk to this outlook is any unexpected extensions or outages beyond the current maintenance schedule.
Flagship Energy’s Tejal Shah Energy Markets Update – 22nd August 2025 appeared first on Energy Live News.